iBook G4 not booting from external HDD?

I have an iBook G4 and a 1TB WD external firewire 400/ usb 2.0/ eSATA HDD that I have partitioned with OS X Tiger and OS X Leopard on separate partitions.

When I connect it via firewire and start up the computer while also pressing ALT, it does not recognize the external drive and therefore does not allow me to boot from it. Is there a common problem that would cause this?

I did use Carbon Copy Cloner to do the cloning of my system and was sure to partition the drive in Disk Utility with the Apple Partition Map setting. Thanks in advance for any help.

Did you format the drive under Apple Partition Map instead of GUID? If you installed Tiger and Leopard on there and the drive partition scheme is still GUID, then no.. you won't be able to boot off the drive. GUID is for Intel based macs which boot off that partition type.

Check in Disk Utility under "Information". That will tell you about what partition type you have for that drive. If it does say GUID and not APM, then that is why it is not booting. You will never be able to boot that drive under PowerPC if its partitioned as GUID. PowerPC macs can only be booted under APM.

I have an iBook G4 and a 1TB WD external firewire 400/ usb 2.0/ eSATA HDD that I have partitioned with OS X Tiger and OS X Leopard on separate partitions.

When I connect it via firewire and start up the computer while also pressing ALT, it does not recognize the external drive and therefore does not allow me to boot from it. Is there a common problem that would cause this?

I did use Carbon Copy Cloner to do the cloning of my system and was sure to partition the drive in Disk Utility with the Apple Partition Map setting. Thanks in advance for any help.

Did you format the drive under Apple Partition Map instead of GUID? If you installed Tiger and Leopard on there and the drive partition scheme is still GUID, then no.. you won't be able to boot off the drive. GUID is for Intel based macs which boot off that partition type.

Check in Disk Utility under "Information". That will tell you about what partition type you have for that drive. If it does say GUID and not APM, then that is why it is not booting. You will never be able to boot that drive under PowerPC if its partitioned as GUID. PowerPC macs can only be booted under APM.

Hope this helps.

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Hello and thanks for the response but I did in fact format it in APM and that's why I was wondering what the problem was. I was also originally trying to boot from the external when my iBook was running Tiger. Was there a limitation in Tiger that prevented booting from an external drive that Leopard that does not have?

All the iBook G4 'Books; will boot from external FW drive. A few things you may want to check:

1) Check there's no selection switch on the external drive (I know LaCie have them).
2) Run Disk Utilities on the external drive and repair any Permissions- you've cloned your internal drive that is set as internal drive and may have some bugs from it's use.
3) Go into "startup disk" and see if the external partition's OSes are seen.

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1) No selection switch on the drive.
2) I don't have the option to verify disk permissions-Why would this happen?
3) I went into startup disk and all partitions are showing as possible startups. However, when I restart and hold down the ALT key, the only startup option I have is the iBook G4's Macintosh HD(even though I selected one of the partitions on the external).

From your screen caps it says "Owners Enabled: No" on the Tiger and Leopard volumes. Do you have the "Ignore Ownership" option checked on these drives? You'd find that as a checkbox when you Get Info on the volume itself (from the Finder).

OSX won't boot from a drive where permissions are ignored (as I understand it).

From your screen caps it says "Owners Enabled: No" on the Tiger and Leopard volumes. Do you have the "Ignore Ownership" option checked on these drives? You'd find that as a checkbox when you Get Info on the volume itself (from the Finder).

OSX won't boot from a drive where permissions are ignored (as I understand it).

Well, that absolutely sucks. My External HDD is definitely on the list of those drives that WILL NOT boot a PowerPC Mac. That sucks a lot. Do you know of an external firewire drive that is guaranteed to boot up a PowerPC Mac? Even if it's a small capacity drive, I want to be able to reload my OS if anything happens.

Why not just buy a cheap external case and put a bare metal drive in it?

Cases are cheap, drives are inexpensive. The only thing you'd be missing would be any proprietary software/hardware.

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The reason is because I don't have the money to just go and buy another drive and a case for it. I have three extra WD external drives now that I can't use to boot up my PowerPC Macs when I thought that any firewire drive would work.

So I put a trade ad in the marketplace forum to see if someone would trade me a small capacity firewire drive, that would boot up a PowerPC Mac, for a 500GB usb 2.0 WD drive I have that's not being used and won't boot up either my PowerPC Macs or my Intel ones.

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